PICTURES of Obama as Hitler and plunging poll ratings have greeted the US President’s planned health reforms.

Critics of the $1trillion health care programme have sunk to a new low, with posters showing President Obama with a Hitler-style moustache, and another showing the wartime Nazi leader meeting doctors with the slogan: “We just love your new health care reform.”

The issue has divided America, and the President’s popularity rating has plunged from 65 to 50 per cent as Republicans refuse to accept the plans.

Mr Obama has called a series of town hall meetings in a bid to win support for reforms that would introduce a Government-run system to provide affordable care to the estimated 40million Americans with no private health insurance.

The debates have turned increasingly stormy. In New Hampshire one opponent turned up with a pistol strapped to his thigh. William Kostnic was allowed to wait for Mr Obama because, under New Hampshire law, he was not committing a crime as the weapon was not concealed and he held a gun permit.

White House officials insisted Mr Obama was not in any danger.

Critics of the reforms have pointed to the NHS, claiming that Government-run health care does not work, one newspaper even asserting that Professor Stephen Hawking would not have survived under NHS care.

But Professor Hawking, 67, treated on the NHS for more than 40 years for motor neurone disease, spoke up for it. “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS,” he said.

He was dragged into the row as Mr Obama awarded him America’s highest civilian award, The Medal of Freedom.